Code brown are two words that no one working in a hospital wants to hear; they indicate a mass casualty event has occurred and staff will be inundated with patients with injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening.
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To train for the effective and efficient response needed in a code brown, more than 100 staff from Ballarat Health Services, Ambulance Victoria, Victoria Police, St John of God Hospital, State Emergency Services and other agencies took part in a simulated training exercise at Ballarat Base Hospital.
After the code brown alert sounded, the simulated scenario unfolded and participants learned they were responding to a vehicle-borne attack followed by an active shooter at the nearby ACU campus with up to 120 patients involved, including many deceased.
“This is much like real incidents that have occurred in Melbourne and throughout the world,” said BHS emergency management manager Don Garlick.
“We have our emergency services responders dealing with the offender and while that occurs, other emergency services are attending to people who are injured, and we have people walking in off the street who are injured.”
The location of the attack, patients and emergency services were depicted with magnets on whiteboards with staff from various hospital departments coordinating care from triage through to emergency, x-ray, operating theatres, recovery, wards and other areas involved in patient care.
Incident commander and BHS chief medical officer Associate Professor Rosemary Aldrich said it was vital that health services ran training simulations.
“It is really important organisations such as ours … are well prepared and know how to really work closely with other emergency and health organisations so we can effectively and efficiently coordinate a response,” she said.
It was the sixth time BHS has run this type of code brown training.
“It’s very important it’s a realistic scenario. Such events are rare, and when they happen we have to be able to respond in real time to save lives and limbs.”